


Relatively Unreasonable

by jonesandashes



Category: Lackadaisy
Genre: F/M, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-20
Updated: 2012-12-20
Packaged: 2017-11-21 16:43:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/599918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jonesandashes/pseuds/jonesandashes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” says Dom, sliding into the booth across from him. This is a joke; Zib’s never laid eyes on him outside the big house. It occurs to him that maybe the reverse isn’t true - alto sax is the sort of girl that demands attention, and Lackadaisy’s bright for a cellar but dim for a dance hall. You don’t see much from the stage.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Relatively Unreasonable

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mjules](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mjules/gifts).



> Thanks as always to [name redacted]. Enjoy!

“We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” says Dom, sliding into the booth across from him. This is a joke; Zib’s never laid eyes on him outside the big house. It occurs to him that maybe the reverse isn’t true - alto sax is the sort of girl that demands attention, and Lackadaisy’s bright for a cellar but dim for a dance hall. You don’t see much from the stage.

It’s probably a testament to Zib’s ongoing nosedive into exhaustion that he can’t think of a snappy response. Dom sets his hat onto the table, and proceeds to look inexplicably dashing in the diner’s harsh, 24-hour lighting.

“I think you dropped your coat under the table,” Dom says, not unkindly.

“Huh? Oh, no, that’s a college student.”

“Mmmmrmph,” says Ivy, from the floor.

“Is she... all right?”

There is no answer from under the table this time. It’s been a long night for everybody; she must have fallen asleep again.

“She’s fine,” Zib supplies. And then, because Dom seems to be unfairly assuming that Zib is somehow responsible for her being under there: “She started off in the booth. She said it was too boothy.”

“Boothy.”

“Yes.”

Dom nods, like that line of reasoning makes perfect sense to him. Zib makes a show of checking his pocket watch, in the hope Dom will leave him to enjoy his pounding headache, racing heart, and buttermilk pancakes in peace.

The watch says it’s half past blood spatter. Dom orders a coffee, black.

“You wanna tell me what happened?” says Dom. He’s settled back into his seat, and watching Zib expectantly.

“You know, I don’t,” says Zib. 

Dom produces two cigarettes from his jacket.

As if that’s going to work, thinks Zib. His own jacket might be fresh out of smokes, and the way a pancake fork can only occupy one hand at a time might be making him twitch, but he’s not some bird singing songs to federal agents in diners. There may come a time when Dorian Zibowski is so far gone to nerves that he can’t arch a derisive eyebrow. But today, he thinks firmly, is not that day.

Dom only shrugs, and lights them both anyway. 

//

What happened was Lackadaisy pissed in somebody’s cereal, _again_ , and Marigold got involved because Marigold has its dirty little fingers in everything, and at some point it was decided that the best course of action was shooting lots of holes in the problem. And to review, the problem was Lackadaisy. 

(“A random street brawl, huh,” says Dom. Zib blows smoke just to the left of his face. 

“So random,” he agrees.)

The firefight’s crowning moment was when Freckle and Mordecai finally made one another’s acquaintance, and immediately established the one thing they had in common.

(“And that was...”

“Um. Flower arranging? These two street vendors were both just really passionate about their, uh, beautiful bouquets. Practically an art form.”

“That doesn’t sound so bad.”

“An art form accomplished with gardening shears.”

“Ah.”)

Zib was hiding in a booze cellar at the time, clinging to an empty clarinet case, but from what he could hear, they then had a go at practical demonstrations. There was a lot of really inappropriate laughter (Freckle) and awkward, laboriously threatening metaphors that were nonetheless grammatically sound and technically made sense if you thought about them long enough (Mordecai).

When the dust cleared, Zib was fairly certain none of his bandmates (past or present) had been murdered, and fairly certain that after some poor bastard mopped up the place he’ll still have job. And now he’s here, eating pancakes.

He’s also here with Ivy, who he’d found camped out across the street when he stumbled out of the Little Daisy Cafe. He was too keyed up to go back to his apartment, and not close enough to Lackadaisy’s gunslinging department to warrant moving to St Louis, or whatever the surviving assortment of goons were planning to do. 

Ivy’s a similar case, except she thinks they’re all chums and won’t go home until she knows everyone’s okay, and also kissed Freckle that one time. 

Oh yes, Zib knows all about that. In between spotting her and coming here, Zib has found out more about Ivy’s romantic life and general world outlook than he ever, ever wanted to know. A prime example is the topic of Viktor, who Ivy believes with all her heart is a complete sweetheart deserving of love and kindness from everyone. Yes, even when they’re watching him abscond into the night with the probable frontrunner of tonight’s bodycount game. Maybe even especially then.

Of course, Ivy’s own gentleman friend was last seen swinging from support beams with a semi-automatic. If that does not speak to broad strokes of unreasonability, well, Zib has a host of other examples to draw from. Such as swinging from support beams with a semi-automatic.

//

Ivy emerges from below the table like a creature clawing its way out of Hell, except if that creature had a messy Louise Brooks haircut and was weirdly adorable. She leaves little pock marks in the plastic while she’s climbing back onto it. Once she’s righted, she gives an uncharacteristically dignified nod at Dom, and reaches out for Zib’s coffee. She drags it slowly back across the table, making extremely serious eye contact with him the entire time, daring him to go ahead and try to stop her.

Mitzi used to get that same kind of look if you disturbed her too early, back before she was a respectable mob boss. It was one the band tried to avoid in that way where they actively sought it on the regular, because it was hilarious. God, if some of the old boys could see them now. These days Mitzi has business meetings over breakfast, and the list of things Zib would do before incurring the wrath of the men she’s got on payroll is very long indeed.

Ivy takes a long, satisfied swig. He’s not sure he’s ever seen her drink anything without three lumps of sugar. Then again, Zib thinks, before last night he’d never seen a person no longer in possession of a face. See! It’s a whole new world, ripe for discovery!

He notices that Dom and Ivy are both squinting at him from across the table. Zib schools his expression into something bland and neutral. “What.”

“You were...” Dom trails off. “Smiling,” he decides, but in the background Ivy’s shaking her head. When Zib looks at her, she contorts her mouth into a horrifying rictus and points at it, helpfully.

The diner bell announces the entrance of three tidy-looking fellows in fedora hats and brown suits. They pause just inside the door, casing the place, gaze lingering just a little too long at Zib’s table. They settle in a little row at the counter stools, and order teas.

Ivy waggles her eyebrows, urgently. Dom’s already shuffling out of the booth. A little pang of disappointment twists in Zib's gut, which he ignores.

“Just a minute,” Dom says, to Zib and Ivy’s earnest nods of agreement. “Don’t go anywhere.”

As soon as his back is turned, they do a quick shimmy out of the booth and then the door.

“Well that was a riot,” says Ivy. “Next stop, Viktor’s house!”

Zib groans. Viktor probably has a good idea about the status and whereabouts of the same people Ivy’s concerned over, so in that respect her reasoning is pretty solid. It is considerably less solid if you take into account things like personal safety and the possibility they’re not the only ones who decided to follow him home. 

“How about you go in the morning?”

“It _is_ the morning,” Ivy says, and shamelessly takes advantage of Zib’s current lack of brain functions and her own second wind to hustle them both into a cab.

//

Viktor lets them in without a fuss, so he’s probably not fostering any mad men at present, but Zib peers surreptitiously around the apartment anyway. All the doors are open and there doesn’t seem to be anyone else here.

“Where’d he go?” Ivy says, with complete disregard for Zib’s efforts at subtlety. “Is he gone already?”

“Ya,” says Viktor.

“Is he,” she says, leaning in, “ _gone_ already?”

Zib eyes the open bedroom door with new trepidation, until he realizes that actually, a Mordecai corpse would probably be less trouble than its living counterpart. Is that terrible? If he factors in that Mordecai was recently interrupted in the middle of a rampage of some considerable quality, it doesn’t seem so bad.

“Oh, _gone?_ No, no,” Viktor says. He sounds like he might find that funny. It’s hard to tell with Viktor. Ivy pats his arm.

From there her line of questioning moves on to Freckle et al. If Ivy sees the potential conflict of interest there, regarding Freckle and Mordecai and her and Viktor, and how Mordecai and the guy she kissed that one time just had an actual, bona fide _shootout_ , she doesn’t acknowledge it. Maybe she’s taking her cues from Viktor, and Viktor’s busted knee cap; he must be an old pro at making mental exceptions for people he weirdly likes despite clear evidence that they are awful. Maybe that’s a tension a person could get used to.

“He can be taking you,” Viktor is saying. And pointing at Zib.

“Take you where?”

Ivy gives Viktor an unimpressed look. “I can be taking myself, thank you. Anyway Mrs McMurry’s all the way across town. He’s just gonna fall asleep in the cab.”

“Will not,” lies Zib.

“Fine, _fine_ ,” Viktor says. “We go.”

Ivy turns to Zib. “Maybe you can take a nap here,” she says, thoughtful.

 _”No,”_ is the response, in unison. Zib’s been up all night and spent some of that time genuinely fearing for his life; he could pass out on a park bench by now, but he is not sleeping in Viktor Vasko’s apartment. Anyway Mordecai might be gone, but the blankets are probably still all bloody.

“Cab,” he says, and Viktor nods in approval.

Outside Ivy gives Zib an encouraging sort of wave and then sets off, Viktor trailing slightly behind, and Zib shuffles away in the opposite direction. Around the corner he finds, not the unlikely cabbie he was still hoping for, but a police officer, and Dom.

Zib freezes.

The cop looks over Dom’s shoulder at him. “Hey you!” he says. “Out for an early stroll, are we?”

“Yes,” Zib says. He pats his pockets for the cigarette he does not have, and hates everything.

Dom shoves his hands in his own pockets, leaning a little closer to the officer. They exchange words in hushed, low tones. In the end, the officer spares Zib a last look, then tips his hat and continues down the street.

“Are you following me?” says Zib.

“That’s ridiculous,” Dom says. “Where do you live? I have the car right here.”

“No thank you,” Zib says, resignedly opening the passenger door. “Absolutely not.” He collapses into the seat, and gives Dom directions that he doesn’t really expect him to follow. He supposes a jail cell will be a nice place to sleep, as long as absolutely no one he works with shows up.

“So how’s the case going?” he says.

“What case,” says Dom.

Zib gestures vaguely. “The case! The case you’re working on. Your job is cases, right?”

“It’s going well,” says Dom, but he’s stealing glances in Zib’s direction. “I’m trying to decide if you’re tired or drunk,” he explains, after several moments of study. He doesn’t sound particularly bothered by either possibility. 

“Tired. I think my legs might fall off.” They haven’t yet, but he’s suspicious. They _could_. They feel like they will.

Dom Drago, international man of mystery, laughs.

“I bet this is how it starts,” Zib says. Dom glances at him, then shrugs. He’s smiling, still, just a little.

“I’ll walk you to your door,” he says, and Zib jerks his head up, fast, and once it’s stopped spinning he discovers they’re stopped outside his apartment building.

“Gee, wow,” Zib says, nonsensically. Dom half-carries him up the steps, and props him against the wall while Zib fumbles with his keys. It is, Zib thinks distantly, a rather comfortable arrangement, Dom’s shoulder warm and steady underneath him. 

He leaves after depositing Zib in the middle of his mattress on the floor, and Zib pretends he’s just checking to make sure the window is secure and that he’s definitely not watching Dom walk back to the car and sit in it for a few minutes before driving away.

//

Dom sips his coffee with every evidence of enjoyment. He unbuttons his suit jacket and looks very casual and also like someone with no intention of moving for awhile. It’s a nice jacket. 

“Wouldn’t want to wrinkle it,” Zib says, because Dom is watching from across the table like he’s waiting for something to happen.

“It’s all right if it does,” Dom says.


End file.
